Holcim scraps plan to burn hazardous waste at new Nyergesujfalu plant

Published:
23 September 2005

Holcim, one of the world’s biggest cement makers, announced on Wednesday that it has scrapped plans to burn hazardous waste at its proposed new plant in the village of Nyergesujfalu (N Hungary), according to the edition of the economic daily Vilaggazdasag.

Environmental organizations and some local residents had opposed the construction of the proposed HUF 62bn Holcim plant in the Nyergesujfalu industrial park on the grounds that the company’s planned incineration of an annual 75,000t of waste, some of it hazardous, at the site posed an environmental threat to the village’s air and drinking water.

The planned Holcim plant, with a capacity to produce 1.5Mt of cement a year, would be completed by 2009, at which time the company would close another of its factories with only a third of this capacity currently operating in the nearby village of Labatlan. The Labatlan plant’s workers would then be transferred to the new Nyergesujfalu plant and an additional 52 workers would be hired, according to company officials.